Urgent - KK upgrade makes screen keep processor awake !

This is my first post after a really long gap on this forum, and I am writing because the battery consumption of my brand new Moto G is getting out of hand.

It's not even been a week since I got it (shipped with KK 4.3). Initial impressions with the usual basic apps (flashlight, gmail and other updates, notes, an office suite etc.) were very positive. I noted with some surprise that the processor seemed to be mostly in the off state (going by the Awake bar in the battery stats). All this promised a very good battery life (I am also a light user and go easy on the internet).

WIthin a couple of days I made the update to KK 4.4.2 which went off smoothly. Before making the update I had taken the precaution of performing a factory reset using the menu option. All apps were reinstalled and everything was running as smoothly as before. I then used migrate to transfer sms, phonebook, and pictures from my old samsung phone.

However, the upgrade seems to have messed up the processor and battery relationship. As you can see from the screenshots here the screen is consuming the maximum battery power. Note that this has come about despite the screen brightness being set at less than 20 % most of the time. I played around and tried to disable any extraneous apps to see if they were somehow leading to this problem. However, I was always seeing in the batt stats graph that the bars for the screen and the processor awake were moving together. In other words, DESPITE low screen brightness, the screen was consuming most power because it was KEEPING the PROCESSOR on ALL the time!

Eventually when this didn't work I factory reset the phone again and this time did not install any apps. However, the problem persists and I am now wondering if I need to take it in to the Motorola service centre.

I am attaching screenshots of the battery stats here taken a few minutes ago.

Your screen is always going to be the biggest consumer of your battery. Just looking at these stats, I wish my phone was as good as this, and I have the Moto X. Look at this a couple different ways:
1. Yes, screen has chalked up 54% of the use...but that is 54% of the 19% USED. So really about 10% of the battery drain is due to the screen.
2. You have used 19% and have 7 hours on the battery. Theoretically with this information, you can get about 32 hours on a single charge. This is more than outstanding.

You said it hasn't even been a week, and you have this good of a battery. The battery is barely broken in, so you are most likely going to see even better performance out of it.

Many thanks for your quick reply!
You make a strong case, but I have to admit that at the moment i am not reconciled to this view.

You see, the reason the battery is showing such good usage is simply because I have barely used the phone since I noticed this issue! i.e. things would look very different if I were to go back to my normal usage - keeping brightness around the mid level mark, internet browsing and way more emailing than I have been doing these past couple of days.

My main concern at the moment is simply that despite little change in my usage, the upgrade is making the screen constantly trigger the processor.

Note that under the same usage pattern the processor barely used to be "awake" while it is ALWAYS awake now!

This has left me worried as I'm using a new phone and if it starts underperforming like this then it hardly augurs well for the future.

Looks normal to me. Do you have something to compare it to? Which phone are you coming from?

Usually, when your screen is on it is because you are interacting with your phone. I would expect your processor to be "awake" when your screen is on. If your phone is awake the entire time that the screen is off, then you have a problem.

I'm getting 5.5 to 6 hours of screen on time with my Moto G. My N4 would struggle to get to 4.5 hours of screen time on a single charge.

Looks normal to me. Do you have something to compare it to? Which phone are you coming from?

Usually, when your screen is on it is because you are interacting with your phone. I would expect your processor to be "awake" when your screen is on. If your phone is awake the entire time that the screen is off, then you have a problem.

I'm getting 5.5 to 6 hours of screen on time with my Moto G. My N4 would struggle to get to 4.5 hours of screen time on a single charge.

Sent from my XT1034 using Tapatalk 2

Like I said the immediate comparison is with the same phone before I made the upgrade to KK ! While it was running on 4.3 I had been surprised to see that the processors were almost never awake even when the screen would be on for extended periods. In that case I used to get really thin bars in the "awake" section even as I would see long elongated bars right underneath in the "Screen ON" section.

I think my primary concern is that this seems to be happening because of some changes to the Android OS (I am not running any apps at the moment and the battery/processor relationship remains the same with screen on making the processor work constantly). If that is the case is it okay or not given the rule of thumb that says that the more the processor keeps working the more the battery consumption.

Try turning on battery saver might make a little difference. Could put phone to sleep via power button when not using phone. Or even set up the phone to auto sleep after 30 secs of none use

The power saver comes from the stock Android version and the only feature it has is to disable background processes. As you can see that the problem in my case is not with background processes, but with foreground ones - the moment I switch on the screen even if at idle, it causes the processor to constantly be in the awake state.
Moreover, to work around this issue of background processes messing up the power consumption, I have not installed any app as of now other than the ones provided in the freshly installed OS.
Note that this is exactly like it was before the upgrade i.e. when it was running on 4.3. However, there the processor would rarely be in the awake state even when I had the screen on.
Thanks!

It never occurred to me that the JB "battery metre" was faulty. Now it's all making sense. I assumed the screen/processor usage from the JB as my baseline. Which is why the KK usage pattern seems to be a problem.

You know, now that you bring this up, I do remember that it struck me as odd that the JB graph would rarely show the processor as awake despite internet browsing and other tasks. But that only made me feel nice about Moto G and I remember exclaiming to a friend "wow, they've made it all really efficient!" ;-)

Okay, so I am guessing your only advice now would be for me to go back to my regular use, and see how the battery holds up now ??

I can see a huge change in battery use after updating to Kitkat, especially the Screen consumes more power and the Phone call's too consume more when compared to JB, Even i came across people saying about Battery power degradation in Kitkat. Someone assist on this?

I haven't spotted those battery issues you have mentioned - been on KK for about 6 weeks now and still get the same battery life as when the phone was on JB (heavy use - upto 10 hours screen on, battery will be dead at the end of the day, light use - solid 2 days with maybe 3-4 hours screen on overall). Battery life was poor for a few days after the KK OTA, but sorted itself out.

A few people have reported high drainage in airplane mode, fixed by a Cache Wipe in the stock recovery. Other than that any 'excessive' battery drain is probably down to the usual culprits - location services, particularly if coupled with Google Now or other Location hungry apps (Facebook and the like)

This is my first post after a really long gap on this forum, and I am writing because the battery consumption of my brand new Moto G is getting out of hand.

It's not even been a week since I got it (shipped with KK 4.3). Initial impressions with the usual basic apps (flashlight, gmail and other updates, notes, an office suite etc.) were very positive. I noted with some surprise that the processor seemed to be mostly in the off state (going by the Awake bar in the battery stats). All this promised a very good battery life (I am also a light user and go easy on the internet).

WIthin a couple of days I made the update to KK 4.4.2 which went off smoothly. Before making the update I had taken the precaution of performing a factory reset using the menu option. All apps were reinstalled and everything was running as smoothly as before. I then used migrate to transfer sms, phonebook, and pictures from my old samsung phone.

However, the upgrade seems to have messed up the processor and battery relationship. As you can see from the screenshots here the screen is consuming the maximum battery power. Note that this has come about despite the screen brightness being set at less than 20 % most of the time. I played around and tried to disable any extraneous apps to see if they were somehow leading to this problem. However, I was always seeing in the batt stats graph that the bars for the screen and the processor awake were moving together. In other words, DESPITE low screen brightness, the screen was consuming most power because it was KEEPING the PROCESSOR on ALL the time!

Eventually when this didn't work I factory reset the phone again and this time did not install any apps. However, the problem persists and I am now wondering if I need to take it in to the Motorola service centre.

I am attaching screenshots of the battery stats here taken a few minutes ago.

It never occurred to me that the JB "battery metre" was faulty. Now it's all making sense. I assumed the screen/processor usage from the JB as my baseline. Which is why the KK usage pattern seems to be a problem.

You know, now that you bring this up, I do remember that it struck me as odd that the JB graph would rarely show the processor as awake despite internet browsing and other tasks. But that only made me feel nice about Moto G and I remember exclaiming to a friend "wow, they've made it all really efficient!" ;-)

Okay, so I am guessing your only advice now would be for me to go back to my regular use, and see how the battery holds up now ??

Thanks again!

As others have replied, this is normal behavior. My graph is almost identical.

This reminds me of something: I know a lot of people (like, say, me) have been shocked when switching from something like an HTC phone to a phone with stock Android because their cell signal dropped from a constant 4 bars to just 2. Then you start to consider "what if the HTC signal meter was never accurate in the first place?", and it all begins to make a bit more sense (Oh, God... sorry, no pun intended). Over time you start to trust your own experience about what's working and what's not!

Thanks for all your replies. Here's a quick update on what's been happening with the battery.
As some members had predicted there is a marked improvement, though it's too early for me to say that battery life in general shows an improvement over JB.

I have two queries in this regard -

1- Going from a full charge to a discharge is fine, but I am also told that it's not a good idea to subject a smartphone battery to deep drain. So, How long should I keep conditioning the battery? When would be a good time to stop and recharge at say the 20 pc mark instead of 0 pc ?

2- While battery performance has improved the battery discharge rate is not even. e.g. it goes down from 100 to 95 pc really quickly (even with a little texting), and keeps going till it reaches the mid 80's.
Then things improve a bit, and it is really the mid range that carries me through the day.
Most interestingly, the bottom end (i.e. below 25 pc) is quite strong. So, while I was panicking one day I realised that actually the battery lasts for a really long time even when it down to 15 pc.
This is fairly uneven and I wonder if there is some way to condition the battery so that it discharges more evenly i.e. takes more time to lose charge from 100 pc to 85 pc or so, and discharges faster from 15 pc to 0 pc?
Thanks!

Thanks for all your replies. Here's a quick update on what's been happening with the battery.
As some members had predicted there is a marked improvement, though it's too early for me to say that battery life in general shows an improvement over JB.

I have two queries in this regard -

1- Going from a full charge to a discharge is fine, but I am also told that it's not a good idea to subject a smartphone battery to deep drain. So, How long should I keep conditioning the battery? When would be a good time to stop and recharge at say the 20 pc mark instead of 0 pc ?

2- While battery performance has improved the battery discharge rate is not even. e.g. it goes down from 100 to 95 pc really quickly (even with a little texting), and keeps going till it reaches the mid 80's.
Then things improve a bit, and it is really the mid range that carries me through the day.
Most interestingly, the bottom end (i.e. below 25 pc) is quite strong. So, while I was panicking one day I realised that actually the battery lasts for a really long time even when it down to 15 pc.
This is fairly uneven and I wonder if there is some way to condition the battery so that it discharges more evenly i.e. takes more time to lose charge from 100 pc to 85 pc or so, and discharges faster from 15 pc to 0 pc?
Thanks!

1. Yes, it is not a good idea to deeply drain a Lithium battery. I typically recharge at about 30%.

2. Something to keep in mind, no 2 people are going to have the same battery results. It depends greatly on apps installed and what they and you do with them.

Can anyone explain what the graph means please and what the little blue lines beside 'Awake- Screen On and Charging' mean?

Thanks

It's a color bar graph to indicate when the device is awake (say checking in on Google for random reason), Screen on is when you have the screen lit up, and charging is when the phone is getting a charge either by AC, DC, or via USB.